The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted its budget for fiscal year 2012-13 on Thursday, an action that allows the county to care for vulnerable residents, keep people safe and increase sustainability at a time when the economy continues to struggle.
Chair Jeff Cogen said the passage May 31 of the $1.5 billion budget reflects the county’s core missions of compassion, equity, sustainability and community safety. The board controls the general fund, which makes up one-third of the total county budget.
“A budget for an organization as large and complex as ours is a challenging thing to put together in the best of times,” Cogen said. “And Multnomah County hasn't had the best of times in a really long time.
“Not only has the county been suffering with fiscal constraints for more than a decade, now we’re doing it at a time when our community needs our services more than ever and it’s a really tough time for our community,” Cogen said.
Multnomah County isn’t alone. Many local and state governments nationwide have had to struggle with the recession just like the residents they serve. Due to the faltering economy, the Multnomah County board didn’t have much room to create new programs. Instead, its priority was to make sure vulnerable populations were served and taxpayer dollars were stretched as much as possible.
Doing more with less, Cogen said, was the goal.
The board made minor amendments to Cogen’s proposed 2012-13 fiscal budget, which include:
- Restoring three full-time equivalent family support workers for the Healthy Start Initiative ($270,000)
- Restoring 1.6 full-time equivalent community health nurse positions ($208,000)
- Adding three women’s and three children’s residential alcohol and drug treatment beds ($157,896)
- Contributing $154,000 for long-term care in order to leverage an additional $146,000 in Medicaid matching funds from the federal government.
- Moving about $2.5 million from the 2012 fiscal year contingency to the 2013 fiscal year contingency.
As the county faces its 12th consecutive year of cuts and a $3.5 million shortfall, Cogen emphasized that the county lacks adequate revenues to maintain current service levels. He thanked AFSCME Local 88, the county’s largest union, for forgoing cost-of-living increases, which saved $3 million dollars that paid for essential county services.
The county made up for the shortfall in other ways, including increasing the number of employees who report to a supervisor, changing to a more cost-effective way of ordering supplies and spending one-time only money to fill the budget gap.
Multnomah County Library will receive $10 million in one-time only money to make up for its shortfall. Due to property tax compression, which affects the collection of the library levy, the library had to tap into reserves to cover its costs for delivering services. Cogen said the three-year levy approved by voters earlier this month does not mean the library is out of the red.
“And even though we were able, thanks to the voters of Multnomah County, to continue the levy at the same rate for the library for another three years,” Cogen said, “the amount of money raised by that levy is inadequate to continue operations at the library at the rate that they've been at.”
Cogen thanked the public for their participation in the budget process, including those who took time from their busy lives to share their thoughts at public budget hearings and others who are from communities that the county does not typically hear from.
“That really helped inform and guide some of the investment decisions that we made,” Cogen said.
For more information:
2012-13 Chair’s Proposed Budget
2012-13 Chair’s Budget Message FY 2013 Proposed Vol 1- Chair's Message (51.9 KB)